


Starship Centoria

by aj_linguistik



Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alicization Spoilers, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Androids, Blood, Body Horror, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Mild Gore, They can use swords in space if I want them to, They don't have tags for other Integrity Knights come on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2019-07-01 09:09:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15771024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aj_linguistik/pseuds/aj_linguistik
Summary: The mission: eliminate the intruders who seek to overthrow our in-progress simulation.Two humans sneak on board the UW-Centoria to attempt to free the androids living on board from the system they're trapped in. The only issue is, while Eugeo hates to defy the direct orders of his commanding officer, he's also cornered by something he didn't expect to find- the inability to kill the man behind the plot. Will he be able to eliminate him before he's eliminated himself for insubordination?





	1. Rookie Mistake

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Alright. I promised myself that I wouldn't do this again. And yet here I am. Doing it. Again. Starting something before I finish 5 other things. I told a friend that I'm just secretly out to monopolize on the Yujikiri fanfiction of AO3 before SAO's third season airs ahaha. Maybe I'll do some real world domestic AU one-shots for them in the near-future. For now, I'm so sorry you have to put up with me. I'll boldly post Yujikiri in the face of all my friends who call me a traitor to Kirisuna. (Chill friends...I like both).

            This is how it always starts. I’m told to hide in the air duct because of my size and I’m forced to look down through the grates to spy on my target. The air flowing around me is cold because the guy I’m spying on noticed that the room warmed up—I wasn’t sure whether or not he suspected me of hiding in the ceiling. The guy below is just going about his business, and I’m not to interact on first glance.

            I can hear static in my right ear from the earpiece that connects me back to HQ. Two other agents are talking over the wavelength about the possibility that the starship’s engines are being tampered with. Every once and a while, I hear the voice of our administrator respond. We’re all working on the same mission: an intruder on board the ship UW Centoria.

            “How do you think these guys managed to sneak onto a ship as secure as this one?” one of the younger agents, Linel, asked. “Do you think they’re from one of the neighboring planets?”

            A mocking snort sounded in my ear.

            “Maybe they’re pirates,” said her scoffer, Eldrie.

            I could almost feel the older agents rolling their eyes. Linel’s question had been a serious one. How had these intruders managed to sneak on board, and how long had they been here? We’d detected unregistered life forms on the ship two days before, but nothing had tipped us off as to how they’d gotten here. One of the unregistered persons was down below me, working at a portable computer in his lap while he rested on the bed.

            “Do you see anything suspicious, Eugeo?”

            The question didn’t come from my superior. It came from Alice, my closest friend and coworker, who was currently staking out this man’s partner. She’d reported that she thought they were using some kind of old-fashioned communication device when she’d first arrived in position, just before I’d had a visual on my own target.

            “He might be a hacker or something,” I said. “He’s been working pretty intently on a small computer. The only thing he stops for is to reach over and grab some small snack food I can’t identify and shove it in his mouth. Wait—he’s picking up a device and holding it to his mouth.”

            Silence came over the wavelength. We all collectively knew the importance of trying to listen in on what these two were saying. It could give us clues as to why they were here and whether or not they needed stopping. Either way, we’d have to confront them eventually. They needed proper registration to remain onboard. Otherwise, we could throw them back out into space, with or without an escape pod, depending on how generous the administrator was feeling.

            It was usually the latter.

            The man below me cleared his throat and wiped some of his snack off of his face before he spoke into the device. He opened his mouth to say what he needed to when the machine began to project his partner’s irritated voice at him.

            “Don’t hold the button down when you’re just making weird noises!” she exclaimed. “It’s a waste of the batteries!”

            He grimaced and rolled his eyes.

            “Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry,” he grumbled.

            The hand that had remained glued to the computer’s screen finally moved up to his eyes. He yawned and rubbed at them, as if he’d been staring at the small device for too long. His hand dropped back down and began typing rapidly again. He took a breath, pressed his thumb down on a button on the communications device, and then spoke.

            “I’ve almost got the code finished for breaking into the main computer room,” he said. “Of course, once I get in there, I can extrapolate data from the ship and find what I’m looking for. But their system’s pretty tight—I’ll only be able to hack into that computer after I’ve gotten the door down to get inside. It’s an impressive ship.”

            I had to wonder why they wanted access to our main computer room. Part of me had expected them to try and hijack the ship—that’s what most people who snuck on board were trying to do. The starship itself was worth millions of credits alone; taking over its entire function was worth even more so. It was a test colony for artificial humans.

            “Kirito, I don’t care how impressive the ship is, I just want what we came for,” the woman returned. “We’re not here to gawk at a ship, we’re here to find a way to liberate these imprisoned souls. We have to look for the way they’re being brainwashed.”  
            A few gasps were let out over the earpieces, even though only Alice and I could really hear things clearly. Everyone else was likely getting a much more muted version of what we were hearing. The administrator hummed and started to clack her fingers against something.

            “They’re lunatics,” Eldrie muttered.

            Several agents murmured their agreement. The two intruders assumed the people on the ship were being brainwashed. That wasn’t true as far as I knew. This was an experiment; of course, people didn’t know what was going on. A simulation didn’t work if people knew they were in a simulation, after all. Reactions and interactions had to be natural. They were being programmed to fit in with other humans on other ships.

            “I think we’ve got everything we need for the moment,” the administrator said. “Report back to the council room to discuss this.”

            I shifted in place to try and push myself back the way I’d come. As I moved, my earpiece came loose and dropped onto the metal beneath me, causing a sharp ringing noise to fill both ears. Several garbled groans came from the earpiece, as well as utterances that sounded an awful lot like my name. They’d all instantly known that I was the one to drop my equipment.

            Sighing, I reached down and went to grab the earpiece. It slipped out of my fingers and fell through the grate I’d been staring down through. I heard it clack against the floor just at the end of the bed. The man was already staring up at the ceiling, searching for the source of the ringing. He bit the edge of his lip. He hadn’t seemed to notice the earpiece falling down and hitting the floor at all.

            “Hey, Asuna, do ships like this usually have noisy air ducts?” he asked.

            The woman groaned as loudly as she could.

            “Kirito, focus.”

            I had two options: I could either find a way to get down there and retrieve my earpiece, or I could head back to the council room without being able to hear or respond to my fellow agents. Trying to get down into the intruder’s room was certainly the more difficult option, but if the administrator changed her instructions or I needed to call for backup, there would be an even worse issue for me to deal with.

            Quietly chastising myself for even dropping the device in the first place, I removed the grate and set it down in front of myself. The man was clearly focused on his hacking project enough to have not noticed the disappearance of the grate. I looked around the room for something good to hide myself behind. There wasn’t much to work with. I had to drop down and keep flat behind the bed if I didn’t want to be seen.

            “There’s no way to do this without being caught,” I muttered.

            I stared down at the earpiece on the floor and sighed. There wasn’t going to be any retrieving it. I’d have to hurry back and deal with the consequences of having dropped it. I tried to shift my body in order to put the grate back. I looked down for a brief second and saw the man staring right up at me.

            Surprised, I immediately lost my balance and fell through the gaping hole beneath me. The bed creaked and I heard feet pad over in my direction. I lifted my face off of the floor and immediately pulled a dagger out and pointed it at him. He awkwardly put his hands partly up.

            “Um…hi…stranger from the ceiling…” he said.


	2. An Exchange

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I might stick with every other Saturday as the rough update schedule. I have three updates running every other week and the off-week has...two. So I gotta make it even and add this to the off-week's #3, right? That's how this works...sure.

            “I didn’t give you permission to speak,” I said.

            The man shrugged his shoulders, closed his eyes, and smiled calmly, accepting that I was right. He appeared to be unarmed. All he was wearing was an unzipped loose jacket over his bare torso and a pair of underwear. Now that I was closer, I also noticed that he was wearing an earpiece—the object I’d assumed to be his communication device was laying on the bed next to his tablet.

            He was of average height and uncomfortably skinny. His black hair fell to the base of his neck and between his eyes, which were also black. I couldn’t tell his pupils from his irises at this distance. His left hand was covered in the grease of whatever snack he was eating, as was part of his face. I lowered my dagger a little, giving him an unsure glare.

            “I only came down to retrieve this,” I said, reaching down, snatching up my earpiece, and holding up my hand.

            He glanced at my hand and raised his eyebrows. I’d purposely wrapped my fingers around the earpiece to conceal what it was. His curiosity made sense. I was hiding from him the very object I’d pointed out to him. He was being polite and keeping his mouth shut, having gleaned from my comment that he wasn’t allowed to speak.

            “You don’t need to know what this is,” I said. “Nor do you need to concern yourself with who I am in the slightest. Go back to your computer. I’ll be leaving.”

            I slipped my dagger back into its hidden sheath in my sleeve and turned to leave. The man took this as his liberty to move again and dashed over to block me from exiting the room. I reached into my sleeve to pull the dagger back out, but he reached out a hand and caught me by the wrist. His reflexes were better than I’d expected.

            “Whoa, you can’t just drop into someone’s room and expect them to just pretend it never happened,” he said. “Why were you in the air duct?”

            He scanned me with a quick snap of his head and then smiled at me.

            “Are you one of the Integrity Agents?” he asked.

            That title wasn’t supposed to be something an outsider who’d snuck aboard the ship just knew. All of the androids on board, of course, knew who we were and to a point what our job was. This intruder shouldn’t have had access to that sort of information. I struggled with two thoughts: I had to report back to the administrator, but I also could learn something valuable from my mistake.

            “You look so human,” he breathed.

            I smacked his hand away and resumed removing the dagger once more. He laughed awkwardly as I pressed the tip into his naked chest just hard enough to apply pressure without cutting him. I locked eyes with him and frowned.

            “I _am_ human, for your information,” I told him.

            He smirked, as if what I’d said were humorous. Being threatened clearly didn’t bother him, either. I had a dagger pressed into his front and he still had the audacity to smile at me. His dark eyes sparkled with curiosity. I should have known right then that he wasn’t an opponent I wanted to go up against alone. That was my second mistake.

            “Fascinating,” he breathed. “You’re so perfectly put together that you can’t even wrap your mind around the fact that you were made differently than I was. I’d love to have a look at your CPU—it must be lightyears beyond anything I’ve ever dealt with.”

            This man was utterly convinced that I was one of the androids. My hand shook as I debated whether to just leave and report back or stay and try to get a statement out of him. He was too confident in this situation for me to assume I had the upper hand. Retreating was a smarter option than staying here. I knew nothing about my opponent aside from what I’d just observed. I took a step back and lowered the dagger.

            “I said I’ll be leaving,” I said.

            The smirk widened as he reached into the back of his jacket with both hands. I felt my chest tighten. Two pockets in the jacket, otherwise undetectable from where I’d been standing and even from my position in the air duct, ran along his back. He pulled out two swords and held one up to me, lifting one eyebrow.

            “I think we both know that I’m not letting an Integrity Agent who was probably spying on me just walk out of this room,” he said. “Did you really think a criminal would walk in here unarmed?”

            If someone had told me that I’d have fallen through an air duct on a mission only to be held at sword point by a half-naked criminal that had snuck onto the UW Centoria, I would have likely laughed at the thought. Now, I was feeling embarrassed at myself for being in such a humiliating position as this.

            “How much do you know?” he asked.

            “I know that you’re called by Kirito,” I said.

            It wasn’t the best answer I could have given, but it was a truthful answer that also didn’t betray how long I might have been there. His name had been said a couple of times while I’d been listening. His smile shrunk down into a firm line. Overall, his expression was now unreadable—he had a decent poker face.

            “All right,” he said. “Since you heard that about me, why don’t we make this even and you give me your name as well? Plus, we also know each other’s faces. Let’s make our exchanges here even. Hell, I’d be willing to even give you something better if you gave me just your name.”  
            I tried to keep a calm and expressionless face to match his. He couldn’t know that the question seemed more than odd to me. He was willing to give me something in turn for my name? Did he think this was some kind of game? He pressed the tip of the sword in his right hand into my collarbone and looked down at the sword in his left hand.

            “How valuable is my name to you?” I asked.

            The smile from before returned. He was enjoying this. His eyes glinted with excitement. This was all like a game to him—and he was having the time of his life. The bored expression that had come from his hacking job no longer remained on his visage.

            “More valuable than you could ever guess,” Kirito said. “Even the regular passengers don’t know your names. Can’t have them snooping around looking for information about you, now can they? That would make things rather hard on you as an agent.”

            How in the world did he know what information the passengers had access to? Either I had wrongly guessed that our system was near-impossible to break into or this guy was insanely good at what he did, despite his lazy appearance. Seeing that my lips weren’t moving to accept his terms just yet, he smiled wider.

            “So, then, what’s valuable to you?” he asked.

            My eyes widened.

            “Valuable…to me?” I asked.

            He nodded. His sword lowered just a little bit, but not enough for me to feel like he wasn’t paying attention. Kirito was still focused; he was trying to fool me into thinking he’d relaxed some, hoping that I’d take the bait and lower my own awareness.

            “You specifically,” he clarified. “I don’t mean what’s valuable to the Integrity Agents. I want to know what you, personally, find valuable. For me, I find my partner valuable. I find information valuable. As for what my organization wants, that’s a different story altogether.”

            I resisted the urge to smile myself. He’d been slightly careless and informed me that he was a part of an organization. Kirito was searching for a bargaining chip, which meant that when he’d offered something in return for me giving my name, he’d been bluffing. He didn’t have something to give to me and he was plotting to try and get me to cave and say what I wanted. If I played my cards right, I could get something valuable to the administrator out of this.

            “Specifically?” I repeated, as he nodded his head. “It may seem ambitious of me, but I personally want to be the one to bring you in to my boss in handcuffs. You and your partner both, before you cause any disruptions in our peaceful home.”

            Kirito laughed to himself and lifted the sword in his right hand up so that it was crossing my neck and touching the side of my cheek. With the other hand, he mirrored his other sword perfectly. My throat was between two sharp blades. If he brought them any closer and slid them through my skin, both of my jugular veins would be severed.

            “Do you value your life?” he asked.

            I swallowed. His eyes didn’t betray whether or not this was a bluff. From this position, it was all too easy to kill me. I slowly reached a hand up as if to move one of the swords, but he pressed the blade on that side into my skin. I felt the surface being pricked. The edge of the sword was sharper than I’d realized.

            “Your name, Integrity Agent?” he asked again.

            Either I gave it to him, or I lost my head.

            “Eugeo,” I said. “Agent Thirty-Two.”

            The swords vanished from either side of my neck and slid back into their hidden sheaths with a soft metal ringing. Overwhelmed by the pressure of the situation, I found myself dropping to my knees and grasping my own throat. Kirito, however, was laughing, as if this were something hilarious.

            “Wow, you actually thought I was going to kill you, didn’t you, Eugeo?” he chuckled.

            I turned my eyes up to him. He was offering me a hand.

            “You gave me your name,” Kirito said. “I’ll let you go and I won’t breathe a word to my partner. I can only hope that in return, you won’t immediately condemn me before you know what it is we’re doing here.”

            Ignoring his outstretched hand, I pulled myself up to my feet and hurried over to the door, the whole while keeping my eyes glued on Kirito. He didn’t move to stop me. I yanked open the door and froze.

            “Why didn’t you kill me?” I asked. “Why are you trusting me?”

            As I hurried out of the door to head back, his response echoed in my head.

            “Sometimes, people aren’t as bad as you might think,” he offered.


	3. Task

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hello, good people. I am posting a day early because I'm in the path of that hurricane that's all over the internet. Ahahaha. I won't be more specific than that. But I might lose power when it hits later tonight/tomorrow so this is my preemptive post. Fun story for you, one of my friends who doesn't even LIKE SAO skimmed some of this fic and was like "I think they should do each other." I was like "I'm on chapter three! And I suck at smut!" She's given me her two cents- she wants smut from me. >_< Gimme time to at least get to the fluff, friend!

            All eyes locked onto me when I entered the room, a good twenty minutes later than expected. As soon as I’d left Kirito’s hideaway, I’d slipped the earpiece back into my ear and reported that I’d been stalled. I hadn’t mentioned precisely what had stalled me other than noting that my earpiece had fallen out. I was given a packet of notes from the debriefing by Alice Synthesis Thirty and then was called into the administrator’s office for a word alone.

            The rest of the agents left the room, smirking and giving me sarcastic well-wishes. As the door shut behind me, the administrator pointed at the chair across from her desk and nodded for me to sit down. I swallowed, nodded back, and slipped into the chair. Her silvery eyes glinted at me, betraying no emotions.

            “Did you learn anything interesting on your side adventure?” she asked him. “Don’t try to hide it from me; the holdup clearly was a run-in with the suspect. To which I’m surprised you didn’t just off him if you were that close. In the end, our goal will be to kill them both. If your position was compromised, as I assume it was, why didn’t you kill him?”

            I should have anticipated that sort of question from the beginning. Our search for information was only a formality. The force of Integrity Agents excelled at neutralizing targets like this. Kirito should have been no problem, even for a newer agent such as myself. So why, then, had I not immediately killed him when I’d had the chance? Before I’d let my guard down, I could have easily plunged my dagger into his naked chest.

            “I…I…”

            She stood up, slowly stepped around her desk, and grasped both sides of my head from behind. Her right thumb stroked my cheek. My stomach turned. I could feel her overwhelming presence and disappointment weighing down my back.

            “Why didn’t you kill him, Eugeo?” she asked, her voice low and soft. “He’s seen your face now, hasn’t he? He’ll know to avoid you next time.”  
            Her breath was on the back of my head. Guilt spread throughout my chest. I’d failed at my job, and she was letting me know that. Why had I hesitated? Why had I let my guard down? I’d convinced myself that I was the one in danger, when in the first place, I’d pointed the weapon at him—not the other way around.

            Why?

            The more I thought about it, the less clear it became. I shouldn’t have even given him a chance to get the upper hand. Yet I’d looked him in the eyes and given him the opportunity to continue his illegal activities.

            “I…was weak…” I whispered.

            I felt the administrator’s hand move from my head to my neck. Her thin fingers wrapped around my throat, pressing at the spot where my neck and jaw met. The sensation made me want to swallow and gag at the same time. My weakness was no excuse. As an Integrity Agent, it was my duty to RATH to eliminate this threat for them.

            “Next time…I’ll kill him,” I said.

            Kirito stood in the way of progress and a project that cost billions. He and his partner aimed to take down this very project—he might have spared my life, but I couldn’t expect that kind of decency next time. In order to stop him, I would have to end his life. That was how things worked here on the UW-Centoria.

            The pressure on my head and neck from the administrator’s hands vanished. She stepped back around the desk and slipped herself into her chair, giving me an expressionless smile. I let out a sigh of slight relief, not wanting to indicate to her that I was only motivated by her threatening aura.

            “Very good,” she said. “This was your first and only warning, Eugeo. I’m not a very patient woman. And because of your mistake, this assignment’s rules have been changed.”

            I sat up a little straighter and clenched my teeth. My actions affected the mission as a whole. This was a result that I hadn’t been expecting. One mistake sent the entire assignment into disarray; my carelessness disrupted the careful planning the administrator put into this sort of activity. Across from me, the administrator’s eyes seemed to dull just a bit.

            “Instead of gaining intel about him as an enemy, your job is now to kill him on sight,” she said.

            My heart sank into my stomach.

            “Specifically, you,” she said, making sure I didn’t miss that bit. “It is your job, and only your job to take down the criminal codenamed Kirito. And when you kill him, you are to bring me proof that you did so. Am I understood?”

            Proof?

            “What sort of proof?” I asked.

            Her eyes closed partly, expressing slight annoyance that I’d asked for clarification on something that had been, in her mind, perfectly clear instructions. She clasped her hands together and linked her fingers.

            “His head, his heart…something that proves he’s not capable of receiving medical attention that can survive whatever injury you give him,” she said.

            I sat back, appalled by the very thought of decapitating him or cutting out his heart.

            “Doesn’t that seem rather…barbaric?” I asked.

            “You failed once, Eugeo Synthesis Thirty-Two,” she said coolly. “This will ensure that you don’t fail a second time. Once you’ve proven that you won’t continue to fail, you won’t be expected to do something like this again. Am I clear?”

            Drooping my shoulders, I nodded and stared down at the floor. The administrator dismissed me with a wave of her hand. I quickly stood up, dipped my head at her, and then turned around and left the office hastily. As soon as the door shut behind me, I covered my face with my hands and let out a groan.

            “That bad, huh?”

            My head snapped up. I was surprised that Alice was even still here. She offered me a rough clap on the shoulder as a means of a pick-me-up. I felt like wilting even more. Her confidence wasn’t something I could just translate into feeling better about ruining the mission. She had to know that, deep down.

            “Be grateful that she didn’t choose to terminate your employment instead,” Alice said, giving me a pointed look. “She’d done that before, and the people she fires are never heard from ever again. It’s better that she’s given you a second chance. What are you having to do to make up for it?”

            I sighed.

            “She’s changed the mission,” I told her. “It’s now specifically my job to take out Kirito. She didn’t mention the woman.”

            “Don’t worry about the woman, Eugeo,” Alice told me. “Focus on that man and how you’re going to finish your mission. That’s all you should be focused on at the moment. We’ll take care of his partner. You take care of him.”

            With her words of encouragement, I headed back to my quarters to get some rest. Tomorrow would start my journey to complete this task for the administrator—a series of attempts on the life of the criminal hacker known as Kirito.


	4. Trial and Error

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Okay, due to the absolute SURGE in hits on this, I've got a chapter. I guess that this is partially due to the premiere of Alicization inspiring people to search for more Eugeo because he's best boy. On that note- that first episode gave me life I am ready for the weekend and more SAO. 
> 
> I will admit something: writing cute, funny things is not my forte. I write angst- and usually paired with lots of gore. I'm going to do my very best not to pull angsty shit here. If you want some angst, I will provide plenty in the future, but I'm trying to make this much lighter. (Or, if you want a fucking soap opera disaster plot fic that's yujikiri, I already have one running...). Fingers crossed I can keep this light.

            Mission Log, Day 1, Attempt 1.

            I spent a day of observing the hacker known only to me as Kirito from a safe and hopefully undetectable distance. From that day of observation, I was able to gather a good deal of relevant knowledge about him and his partner in crime, the woman called Asuna.

            First relevant piece of information: Kirito has some kind of an issue with doors. When I say an issue, I mean it’s like he thinks windows or half-walls are simply superior to using an actual doorway. He’d even thrown open his room window and rolled out of it just to avoid using his door. He jumped over railings, slipped through gaps in bars, and leapt out of windows practically all day, usually gaining an irritated comment from his partner.

            Second thing of note: He and Asuna aren’t the only two working on this plot, as they also have a rather sophisticated AI that they interface with through small handheld devices. They refer to the AI as “Yui.”

            Third, and most disturbing, piece of intel: Kirito’s so good with computers that if I don’t assassinate him quickly, it could mean big trouble for RATH. He was in charge of anything and everything related to hacking in their operation. Asuna worked on the tactical things while he dealt with the technology.

            Knowing those three main things, I began my personal mission. From where I was hiding in the air duct, I could see Kirito fiddling with the wires he’d pulled out of the wall. He was working on hacking into the system to get the doors blocking their path open. Asuna stood at his back with what looked like a rapier in her hands.

            “Yui, could you check for cameras in the next room over, please?” Kirito asked, not removing his eyes from the tablet in his hands.

            “Yes, Papa!” the AI exclaimed.

            I blinked in their direction and rubbed my ears.

            “Did the computer just call him _papa_?” I muttered to myself.

            With a few more presses of the buttons on his tablet, the door made a beeping sound and whooshed open. I pushed myself backwards and into the room they were now entering. Kirito walked through the door, glanced up at the camera, and then smirked.

            “Why do I get the feeling I’m still being watched?” he asked, turning his head to glance at the girl behind him.

            “Quit goofing around, Kirito,” she said, grabbing him by the shoulder and pushing him forward. “You realize your time is limited, right? I could take as long as I wanted on this mission, but being stuck with you means that I only have a month left on my hands.”

            Kirito let out a low whistle and shook his head.

            “Man, they do _not_ trust me, do they?” he said, chuckling.

            Asuna squinted at him and placed one hand on her hip.

            “You hacked into their system and stole information that could literally bring ruin to their entire operation,” she said. “And with your brain, they pretty much figure in a month you’ll figure out how to get away from me so I can’t take you back to prison where you belong.”

            I bit into my lip and hummed. So, I had a month to figure out how to kill him or he was going to be shipped back to prison. These two planned to have their mission completed within the next thirty days. I took a deep breath. He was going to die when he touched the next lock anyways.

            Before climbing into the duct, I’d given myself control over a backup function embedded in the computers that controlled the doors. Now that they only had one route to follow with no guessing which door he’d hack next, I could send a command to the next door that would set off a trap of sorts near it. He would be hit with a small needle coated in poison and that would be the end of this project.

            “Yui, run a check on the next computer,” Kirito said. “Just in case.”

            Huffing, Asuna pushed him closer to the next door.

            “We don’t have time for you to pretend like this is some kind of game where you might not be safe,” she said. “Just open the next door.”

            He held up a finger, signaling for her to wait. They awkwardly locked eyes while they waited. Asuna opened her mouth to protest, but then his tablet began to beep, and Yui’s voice came back through the speaker.

            “Papa, if you remove the computer from the wall, you will activate a safety measure meant to kill you,” the AI said.

            Kirito gave Asuna a smug look.

            “Safety first,” he said.

            I wanted to slam my head into the wall just as much as Asuna probably did. He gave Yui a command to disable what I’d done and then popped open the wall and stuck his hands in gingerly. His AI gave him a startled warning, but it was already too late. She hadn’t disabled the function because I’d been prepared to fight her code. However.

            When the needle shot out towards Kirito’s neck, he casually tilted his head to the right and let it zip past his neck.

            “Hey, Asuna, duck.”

            She dropped down to the ground just as the needle flew over her head and clattered against the far wall. She whirled around to glare at Kirito’s back, as if the flying needle was actually his fault. He continued to meddle with the door as if nothing had happened at all.

            “Real amateur, Eugeo,” Kirito said.

            I almost jumped at hearing my name. A part of me wondered if he knew I was within five feet of him, but another part of me knew that he knew I was one of the agents sent to terminate him. He had no way of knowing that it was just me, but he only had one name to toss out in such a situation.

            “Who is that?” Asuna asked.

            Kirito sucked his teeth and sighed.

            “Right, a guy fell through my air duct and tried to kill me in my underwear,” he said nonchalantly.

            “I didn’t need to know you were half-naked,” Asuna said.

            “He’s in the air duct again,” Kirito noted.

            Asuna jerked her head up and slammed her rapier up at the ceiling. It pierced through the metal beneath me and just barely missed my armpit. I did end up jumping that time and slammed my head on the metal over my head. Groaning, I clutched my head and rolled onto my side.

            “Oowwww…”

            “Yeah, that sounded like it hurt, buddy,” Kirito said. “Come on, get out of the air duct. You gotta find a better place to hide, you know. What are you, a rookie?”

            I threw open one of the vents and hung my body halfway out of the duct, causing Asuna to yelp and jump back. She pointed her rapier at me and knit her eyebrows together. Kirito turned around, keeping the computer in one hand. He smiled at me.

            “Why don’t you step over here and let me kill you?” I said.

            Kirito nodded at Asuna.

            “Sorry, but she’s determined to keep me alive before my execution,” he said, shrugging. “She won’t let you touch a hair on my head.”

            “Your WHAT?” I said.

            He didn’t care to elaborate.

            “I’ll be a nice guy and politely tell you to run,” Kirito said, turning back to his work. “Okay, Yui, I need you to…”

            I dropped out of the air duct and barely dodged Asuna’s rapier. Unwilling to argue, since my hiding spot had been an apparently poor choice, I bolted to the door, quickly entered the passcode, and then leapt through it and slammed my hand into the button that forced it back closed. Asuna’s weapon sliced through the door centimeters from my ear. I swallowed.

            “Okay…new plan…separate them,” I said to myself. “Definitely…separate them.”


	5. The Stubborn Felon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Heyo! I got a chapter. A friend requested a scenario and quite frankly- that's a fun idea. I'm totally willing to include suggested attempted assassination scenarios! Another friend who hates SAO even put in a suggestion. So, if you want to see a certain thing, let me know either here or on my tumblr (@thegayfromrulid).

            Checking back over my shoulder, I nodded to myself as I affirmed that I was the only person in the hallway. Turning back to the door, I slipped a master key into the lock and it clicked. A light to the left of the key slot turned green; the door slid open with a quiet whoosh, allowing me to enter the room. No one seemed to be inside, so I hurriedly dashed over to the closet, yanked the door open, and then hid myself inside.

            As my previous attempt had been a bust due to the presence of Asuna, who seemed rather dead set on protecting her leased-out prisoner. I figured that if I lay in wait in Kirito’s quarters, it would be much easier to kill him than when Asuna was handy with a weapon. I leaned against the shelf at the back of the closet and sighed.

            “I’m not cut out for this assassination stuff,” I muttered.

            The shelf behind me, as if agreeing, gave way under the pressure of my body weight and I crashed into the floor in a heap of clothing articles. Frowning, I wondered why Kirito would need to bring so many clothes with him on a mission to usurp the project of the UW-Centoria and pulled a piece of clothing off me. When I looked at the article of clothing, I felt my stomach drop.

            “I’m in the wrong room…” I muttered.

            Unless, of course, Kirito liked wearing skirts. I looked down at the heap of clothes surrounding me. It wasn’t my place to assume anything, but based on observation alone, these weren’t his clothes. I stood up and made to exit the closet, certain I was in the wrong room, when I heard the room’s exterior door slide open.

            “That’s just really, really, gross, ok?”

            The voice I heard caused me to freeze up as I hovered my hand over the handle in the door. Kirito and Asuna’s chosen rooms to hide away in must have sat right next to one another. There was a nervous laugh that I presumed to be Kirito. Asuna let out a cry of distress.

            “Augh! Kirito! Don’t show it to me!”

            “It’s just a little bloody!”

            “I can’t believe you removed that, you psycho!”

            I took a few quiet steps back and covered my mouth with one hand. If I was lucky, I could escape this situation and maybe take out Asuna in the process, but I would have to wait long enough for Kirito to leave. Sighing, I plopped back down on the floor and held my head in my hands. This was going to be a long wait.

            “Look, look, you were the one who removed me from prison illegally to get your job done,” Kirito said. “It’s only fair that we discard my chip so you don’t get caught with a felon, right? You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

            Something made a large thump against the wall near the closet door.

            “You really try my patience, you know,” she said. “No! Don’t stomp on it!”

            A few stomps came through, albeit muffled.

            “That was a thirty-thousand credit implant, Kirito,” Asuna groaned.

            He laughed.

            “And now it’s not tracking me anymore!” he replied. “Actually, could you double check that, Yui? That the chip implant isn’t still functioning?”

            “On it, Papa!”

            “You literally smashed it to bits!”

            Their conversations surprised me. I’d originally assumed they were on a mission together, sent by some person as a team to disrupt the in-progress android simulation aboard the UW-Centoria. However, based on their ramblings from the previous day and now, Kirito wasn’t exactly her teammate. I was curious to know what made him a felon, as he so lightly put it.

            “The chip implant is no longer sending or receiving any data,” Yui confirmed.

            “Excellent,” Kirito said. “Now, we can really get down to business.”

            Asuna sighed as loudly as she could.

            “It better involve something more than hacking into the cafeteria,” she said. “I don’t know if you think this is some kind of a joke, but I need to have my hands on those lightcubes. Watching you play with android spaghetti is not productive or amusing.”

            There was a pause.

            “But it _is_ edible,” he said.

            A large _fwump!_ sounded against the closet door. I jumped a little. Asuna must have leaned up against it; her voice was closer than his was, after all. When she spoke again, she sounded even closer, confirming that she was the one leaning against the door and blocking my only exit.

            “Either way, I have to procure those lightcubes, and you’re only here because I’m not good with computers,” Asuna said. “Otherwise, I completely agree with why you were locked up and might even agree with your execution.”

            Kirito sucked his teeth.

            “Aw, you don’t mean that, do you?” he said. “What I did was not that bad, in the grand scheme of things. The results weren’t what I was aiming for, but my intentions were in the right place, okay?”

            Asuna drew in a deep breath.

            “Whether your mission to hack into the strictest, most well-protected top-secret information storehouse in the universe was in good taste or not—which it definitely was _not_ —you conveniently always gloss over the fact that you killed someone,” Asuna said, her voice sounding rather icy. “You killed a few people.”

            “In self-defense,” Kirito said.

            I shifted in place. The other night, when I’d been face-to-face with Kirito, I’d easily mistake him as just a hacker. Asuna’s words didn’t seem too far-fetched, though—he kept two swords on his person and held them like he knew what he was doing. Still, I was more inclined to believe him in that it was self-defense. He didn’t have the eyes of a killer.

            Then again, I’d never met one.

            “You killed the man with the highest level of authority in my country,” Asuna said. “And you want to claim you killed him in self-defense?”

            Covering my mouth again, I barely could hold back my astonishment.

            “He killed a national leader?” I whispered to myself.

            Kirito laughed nervously.

            “You say that like you were there!” he said. “If I hadn’t defended myself, I would be dead right now! He was a pretty powerful opponent. It was either kill or be killed, there was no other option. And even though it was self-defense, I do regret that action.”

            “Oh? You regret it, do you?” Asuna huffed.

            “Every single minute of every single day,” Kirito said. “I didn’t become a hacker to kill people. I became one to help the people that the government was hiding the truth from. If I wanted to kill people, I’d take a job more like what that guy Eugeo does.”

            The door handle to the closet clicked.

            “Oh please, not another comment about him,” Asuna said. “You are obsessed with the fact that one of the agents on board this ship is out to assassinate you, like it’s some kind of game.”

            In the next moment, the door slid open and revealed bright light, Asuna’s turned face, and a little behind her, the back of Kirito’s head. I jumped backwards, once again managing to knock a shelf over, and fell back down into a heap of her clothing. Hearing the unexpected clatter from within her closet, Asuna whipped her head around and glared down at me, both surprised and furious.

            “YOU!” she exclaimed.

            Kirito perked up and turned around, a stupid smirk plastered on his face.

            “Is that Eugeo? Hey, Eugeo!” he said, laughing to himself. “Why don’t you come out of the closet, buddy?”

            Coming out would be my only form of escape, but Asuna blocked the exit. She reached for her waist, where her sheath was attached to her hip. Her fingers wrapped around the hilt of her rapier. Without any other options, I threw myself forward, against her expectations, and slammed into her midsection, knocking her and myself to the floor. Kirito looked down at us and shook his head.

            “What in the world was that?” he asked.

            I lifted my head up and gave him an irritated glare. He just waved at me. I noticed that there was a chunk of flesh missing from his arm, probably from where he’d removed the chip implant he was talking about. I grimaced at the sight of the bloody mess. Was I sure I could kill him with a blade? I didn’t have time to think about that. I leapt up, dashed forward, whipped out my blade, and stabbed it in his direction.

            Kirito casually stepped a little to the right, causing my blade to barely nick his side. He reached down and grasped the blade in his hand to keep me from easily changing the direction of my swing or pulling the sword back to my person. I tried to slip it out of his fingers, but he clamped his fist even tighter.

            “You don’t really want to kill me, do you?” Kirito asked.

            I locked eyes with him, wanting to show him that I wasn’t intimidated, but my heart suddenly started racing. His eyes, the color of midnight, sparkled dangerously at me, amused by yet another failure on my part to dispose of him. He tugged on my blade, causing me to stumble forward so that he could lean in closer. His forehead almost touched against mine. I swallowed.

            “I’m already a dead man, Eugeo,” he said. “There’s no need to feel guilty.”

            No response seemed to fit a statement like that. I searched my brain for something to fill the awkward, empty space with. He didn’t move his eyes. As I struggled to maintain eye contact, a single, surprising thought crossed my mind.

            _He’s actually rather attractive._

            Feeling my face turn red from the mere thought, I hurriedly offered a quick rebuttal.

            “Then why are you resisting me killing you?” I asked.

            As his eyebrows shot upwards, I yanked my sword out of his hand and moved into position to swing at him again. His hands went behind his head once again and whipped out the two swords hidden in the sheaths that were built into his clothing. My sword slammed into his as he crossed them into an X in front of his body.

            “You don’t want to die,” I said, furrowing my eyebrows. “You’d have left that chip in your arm if you did. And the reason I haven’t killed you yet is simple—I need more experience. But I’ll get there, I swear—”

            My words cut off as Asuna’s foot slammed into my temple and the world went black. So much for that conversation.


	6. Dinner is Served

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: IT'S BEEN OVER A MONTH I AM SO SORRY OH MY GOD! I don't know what happened! Aaaah! But here is a chapter. Two of my friends gave me a strangely specific prompt for an assassination attempt for Eugeo. So despite neither of them being SAO fans I dedicate this chapter to the creator of the prompt- my bestfriend- and my bi momfriend who picked out a finer detail. It was amusing to write.

            Alice’s laughter filled my ears, but I didn’t exactly feel the warmth of a friend being amused. She had been laughing for a rather extended period of time about the fact that Asuna knocked me clean out and then dropped me into a trash chute so as not to have to deal with me regaining consciousness. When I’d come to, I’d messaged in to find out everyone was panicking because they’d presumed Kirito killed me.

            No, but they did have to remove me from the garbage.

            I tried to tune out her laughter as I measured out a decent portion of liquid and then dumped it into a pot. She reached her hand over to the pot and went to stick her finger in the contents—a bright red tomato sauce—only to have me swat at her hand and shake my head disapprovingly.

            “Alice, I just dumped poison in that,” I said, giving her a pointed look.

            She raised her eyebrows in realization and crossed her arms.

            “So, when you asked me to make pasta…?” she trailed off and then started laughing again.

            I sighed and stirred my tomato sauce in silence. I’d avoided telling Alice why I was making food just to avoid getting laughed at, but since she seemed adamant to try it, it was important that she know the details. What I’d just poured into the sauce was a potent poison. She could have ingested it and then I’d never forgive myself.

            “Before I was so rudely knocked unconscious,” I said, “I overheard Asuna mention that they frequented or stayed for a while in the cafeteria. Apparently, Kirito won’t think twice about consuming a meal after being pressured to do all of the brainwork for their little operation. So, I determined that the best way to kill him likely isn’t with a sword, but with poison.”

            Alice set down the spoon she was using to stir the pasta with and gave me a funny look. I blinked back at her. She avoided letting her face crack into a huge smile, but it was pretty obvious she was holding it back.

            “You’re telling me you want to poison your target…with marinara sauce?” she giggled. “Red sauce and pasta, the surefire way to outsmart a hacker with swords in his jacket.”

            I rolled my eyes.

            “I don’t presume he’ll check his food,” I said. “He seemed to eat it without question yesterday; I doubt he’d suddenly check it today if he’s expecting me to only attack with force. This won’t even cross his mind.”

            She crossed her arms over her chest.

            “And how do you ensure he eats this batch and not just any random plate he picks up from the cafeteria?” she asked.

            I frowned.

            “I was thinking a disguise,” I said. “But the issue is, I don’t have anything decent to hide my face with. By now, they know my face.”

            Alice picked up a spoon and stirred the pasta she was cooking.

            “Well, you do drop in often and poorly attempt to kill Kirito every time by getting super close to him,” she noted. “But the best way to hide is in plain sight. I’ve got just the thing for you; when you’re ready to offer up your deadly dish, I’ll help prepare you.”

            Turning to her, I saw a grin on her lips. I didn’t like that look. Whatever she was planning, I was certain I wouldn’t like it. Yet, I shrugged and agreed to it anyways. She was still my superior and a more experienced Integrity Agent than I was. I had to trust Alice’s instincts and insight from years on the job.

Unfortunately, her insight made me feel like an idiot.

           

            Kirito and Asuna entered the cafeteria a couple of minutes past one in the afternoon, with her looking stressed and him looking amusingly optimistic. They slipped into a couple of chairs by a table on the far side of the room, choosing to take a rest before going to retrieve their meals. Alice patted my shoulders.

            “Wait for just the right moment,” she said. “Offer them some food and then politely make sure they take it or at least try it.”

            I nodded.

            “R-right,” I said.

            I took a deep breath and slowly made my way over to their table, holding the tray Alice and I had prepared so tightly my knuckles went white. As I approached the table, I overheard today’s conversation.

            “And the worst part about _that_ is that the androids can’t even distinguish that they’re not real humans,” Kirito was saying. “So, in the end, you can’t just up and say the androids are tools. They’re essentially human themselves. Artificial humans, but still humans.”

            Asuna groaned.

            “Kirito, they’re just really realistic robots,” she said. “I get that you feel a little morally off attacking them, especially when you can’t tell they’re not people, but if you’re going to gripe like that, need I remind you that you’re on death row for murder.”

            He lifted up a finger and wagged it.

            “For self-defense,” he insisted. “If I hadn’t killed him, he would have killed me. It was as simple as that. I don’t exactly feel great about that. I’d appreciate if you stopped bringing it up every time I have a moral complaint.”

            She shifted in her chair and leaned forward. Her eyes narrowed a little.

            “That’s just it, I’m tired of the moral complaints,” she said. “I don’t like having a death-row criminal tell me off about what’s right or wrong. You lost the right to make that call the moment you broke into the Intergalatic Records Database. You’re a rulebreaker at the least and a murderer at most. I don’t have to justify this mission to you.”

            Kirito leaned back into his chair so far that he almost bumped into me. I stepped back a little. Both of them noticed me standing there. Asuna’s eyebrow twitched a little. I suspected she might have recognized it was me. I took a breath and pretended not to notice, slipping the tray in full view.

            “Sir, your meal,” I said, just like Alice had told me.

            The response was expected.

            “That’s funny, I didn’t order anything,” Kirito said, blinking.

            He shared a weird look with Asuna, glanced back up at me, smiled, and then shrugged his shoulders. Asuna’s expression morphed into something between severe distrust and a certain level of intolerance for her partner’s carefree behavior. Kirito directed his smile at me. I felt my heart jump a little.

            Why was I trying to poison him again? I hurriedly set the tray down in front of him and stammered a response.

            “It’s…it’s on the chef,” I explained. “He…uh…noted your interest in his dish yesterday and was delighted enough to offer you another on a day when this particular dish isn’t served. I…I hope we haven’t upset you.”

            Asuna buried her face in her hands and sighed. Kirito waved at me dismissively.

            “Oh, no, I’m not bothered at all!” he said.

            As if to prove I’d done nothing to offend him, Kirito hurriedly pressed his hands together, thanking me for the food, and then scooped up a bunch of pasta with the fork and shoved it into his mouth. Aside from the clear issue that this dish was poisoned, I found myself thinking that his earnestness was rather cute. For once, I was seeing him in a context where he wasn’t aware I was there. His natural carefree self was on full display for me.

            I was yanked out of my appreciation of seeing this behavior when Asuna reached one hand out to him, being careful not to touch him, and gave him a serious look. He chewed his mouthful, swallowed, complimented the flavor, and then shoved another forkful of pasta into his mouth, frowning at Asuna.

            “Not a single thought as to what might be in that pasta?” Asuna asked.

            Okay, yeah. She’d definitely figured it out. Asuna was aware that it was me and was for some reason waiting to see if Kirito would figure it out before he stopped eating the spaghetti. Shrugging, he shook his head, swallowed what was in his mouth, and then shoveled more in. I blinked at him. Could he really not taste it? Even I had to wonder at this point.

            “Asuna, I’m not one of those people that just guesses the ingredients of food,” he said, his words a little muffled from chewing. “I don’t have much of a need for that skill. If you really want to know…hey, Yui? What are the ingredients of this?”

            His partner let out a groan and let her head slam onto the table. He gave her a concerned look and shook his head. Picking up the plate, he scooped more pasta into his mouth as he waited patiently for Yui to give an answer to his question—for the sake of Asuna, no doubt. A voice came from a device on his wrist.

            “Papa, after analyzing the dish, the ingredients are a wheat-based pasta called spaghetti and a sauce made from tomatoes, spices such as oregano, garlic, onion, and parsley, and unusually enough, something that I’m registering as antifreeze.”

            I took a few steps back. Kirito blinked a few times and slowly set the plate down. He’d already cleared more than half of the plate. His eyes darted between the plate of food and me, trying to figure out what was going on. Asuna finally lifted her head off of the table and gave him an exasperated answer.

            “Kirito, that’s just Eugeo in a stupid fake mustache!” she exclaimed.

            He spit out what was in his mouth and stared up at me, unbelieving. I took another few steps back, but Asuna leapt up out of her seat and reached for my face. She yanked off the cartoonishly large brown mustache. I pressed my fingers to my lip and winced. Kirito jumped out of his chair and pointed a finger at me.

            “You!” he shouted. “Did you just—?!”

            Realization and horror set into Kirito’s eyes for a moment. He knew that for once, I’d bested him. And then, he did something beyond my expectations—and likely Asuna’s, considering that her reaction was shrieking. He picked up the plate and dumped the rest of the pasta in his mouth despite knowing I’d poisoned the dish.

            “Are you insane?!” I asked.

            Asuna cut off her cries and gave me an odd look.

            “You’re the one trying to kill him here!” she pointed out.

            I froze up. She dashed past me, grasped Kirito by the shoulders, and then dragged him out of the room, muttering about how she’d have to do some ridiculous first aid on him in order to save him from his own stupidity. I stared at the spot where they’d been moments before and posed a question to myself.

            If my goal was to kill him, then why was my gut reaction to him willingly consuming poison shock? Did I want to keep him alive?

            “Whoa, that actually worked!” Alice said, popping up behind me.

            “Hey, Alice…” I said.

            She patted me on the back and cast me a worried glance.

            “What’s up?” she asked. “You don’t seem too thrilled about your possible victory.”

            I shook my head.

            “What’s so wrong about just bringing him in to a locked cell?” I asked. “There’s no need to kill him, and then we could interrogate him and figure out what his and Asuna’s plan is. Doesn’t that seem like a better option than just killing him?”

            Alice frowned and crossed her arms.

            “The administrator doesn’t have much of a need to figure them out if we can just off them,” she said. “We’ve done our job and gathered intel on what their goal is. They’re here to steal a Lightcube from the main operating system in the center of the UW-Centoria. If we kill them, then they can’t accomplish that mission. Since they didn’t have a search warrant, even though Asuna claims to be from a government office, we don’t have to take responsibility for their lives.”

            She looked at me again, this time really scrutinizing my face. Clearly, she understood that something was up beyond just clarifying why we were doing what we were doing. I averted my eyes and stared down the hallway where Kirito and Asuna had exited a few minutes ago. Guilt suddenly weighed on my stomach. Why did it bother me so much?

            “Is everything okay, Eugeo?” she asked.

            I hurriedly nodded. I didn’t want her to suspect me of suddenly changing my mind. But deep down, I knew that I likely was. I didn’t want to kill him. I dreaded learning the news of his status later in the day. When I thought about taking his life, an image popped into the forefront of my mind, causing me to feel slightly nauseated at my intentions.

            His face, smiling at me pleasantly as he accepted what he assumed was a gift.

            I covered my face with my hands and walked away from Alice, telling her I didn’t feel good and would see her at the next meeting presuming Kirito died from the poisoning. I hurried back to my own quarters, crawled into my bed, and shoved my face into a pillow, trying to erase the intense feeling of guilt. I fell asleep without changing into night clothes or even showering.

            In the morning, when I received word that my attempt had failed again, I couldn’t help but let out a breath of relief. I caught myself mid-exhale and then stared at a point on the wall as the realization hit me.

            I didn’t want to kill him. He was too cute to kill.


	7. Archery Isn't His Forte

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Firstly, it's been WAY too long. But I am here, please don't be sad. I have brought more content. Perhaps not as funny as the previous chapter (my best friend really seemed to hit the nail on the head with that prompt and I am so grateful you guys loved it!). This chapter was a prompt from an anime club officer at my school- it will likely be kinda obvious where he pulled the idea from, haha. But I went with it anyways. And I'm slipping a little more plot in while I cartoonishly torment poor Kirito.

            Now determined to _not_ kill Kirito, I found myself trapped in an awkward place between obligation to fulfill my duty and my personal goal to keep him alive. Which meant, of course, that I now had to think of ways that I could attempt to kill him without successfully killing him—a task that proved even more difficult than simply just trying to kill him at all.

            The day after the poison incident, I opted for using a weapon I was really no good at using. Alice gave me a questioning look and stressedly asked me if I was sure that I wanted to try and use a bow and arrow to kill him with. I told her not to worry too much about the details as I dashed off to find the odd pair of intruders again.

            They were just heading out of their quarters. Asuna looked impatient as Kirito trudged along behind her, his face betraying his lack of sleep. His shoulders were slumped downwards, his head hung low, and he clutched his stomach.

            “That’s what you get for willingly consuming a plateful of antifreeze!” Asuna said. “After you knew it was poisoned, you shouldn’t have kept eating it! What’s the matter with you?”

            Kirito gave her an unamused glare.

            “You act like I’m supposed to feel self-preservation when I have, what, thirty-eight days left to live regardless?” he said.

            She huffed and marched forwards.

            “That Eugeo guy made a valid point,” she said. “If you really wanted to die, you wouldn’t have dug that chip out of your arm.”

            Kirito straightened up. He stopped walking, staring at her back with wide eyes. It wasn’t too clear what surprised him about that statement. I figured it didn’t matter too much at the moment. I stepped out around the corner while he was distracted, hoping to get into position behind him. Unfortunately, he turned at that very moment and slammed into me.

            I fell to the floor, but since I’d just come up from a rarely used staircase, he turned and tumbled down the steps in the least graceful way possible. Asuna dashed back to the staircase, grasping her head.

            “You IDIOT!” she shouted, running down after him.

            Well, if now was the time to take a shot at him and pretend like I was out to kill him, it would be now, before Asuna noticed it was me he’d run into. He was crumpled awkwardly at the very base of the stairs, just far enough away that I was confident I wouldn’t be able to accurately hit him with an arrow. I quickly knocked an arrow and made it at least look like I was aiming for him. The two seemed unbothered—he didn’t move at all, and she had slowed down.

            “It would do you a lot of good to pay attention to your surroundings!” she exclaimed.

            He lazily pointed a thumb up at me.

            “Eugeo came out of nowhere!” he said.

            Asuna froze.

            “Eugeo?!” she said.

            Asuna whirled around to look at the top of the stairs. I hadn’t expected her to turn around so quickly. I panicked, glanced at Kirito again, and then let go of the arrow, not really caring where arrow landed at this point. Asuna reached out to interfere with the trajectory of the arrow but was a hair too late. We both watched with horror as arrow surprisingly struck its mark.

            Unsure of how to react, Asuna glanced at where my arrow was currently stuck and then back at me. She covered her mouth. I swallowed. That had been completely by accident. I hadn’t meant to hit him at all. I’d just let go and presumed I’d miss. I hadn’t envisioned actually nailing him with it. Asuna let out a snort.

            “What’s…so funny?” I asked.

            Kirito awkwardly rolled onto his side, reached up for the handrailing, and then tried to pick himself up. He managed to get upright enough as he clung to the railing, but then he stopped and snapped his head in my direction. His eyes locked with mine; he looked almost insulted.

            “That really hurts, man!” he exclaimed. “If you’re trying to kill me, why were you aiming for my ass?!”

            I felt my face burning with embarrassment. Asuna, unable to contain her amusement, finally doubled over and laughed so hard she started hyperventilating. Perhaps it was the seriousness with which Kirito accepted the fact that I’d managed to plant an arrow in his posterior that made her laugh so. When I didn’t offer an explanation, Kirito decided to offer his own.

            “You were staring at it, weren’t you?!” he asked.

            I waved my hands dismissively and shook my head back and forth so fast it made me a little dizzy. By this point, Asuna herself had fallen down on the staircase, holding her stomach as she laughed. I panicked and dashed down the stairs, eager to clear up the misunderstanding. But it didn’t go how I logically felt it should have gone.

            No, I reached Kirito, who was giving me a look somewhere between smug and irritated, tried to give him apology, and then belatedly realized that gibberish had come out of my mouth. I then attempted to fix the mistake by trying to reclaim my arrow, which resulted in a hysterical shriek from Asuna, who was about to die of laughter.

            “I’d be appreciative if you _didn’t_ reach down there to get that, because as much as it’s interfering with my ability to walk, it will bleed more if you yank it out,” he said.

            He finally forced himself up into a standing position. The expression on his face spoke to exactly how painful that movement had been. His face contorted, and he flashed me his clenched teeth. He reached out and grasped my shoulder.

            “Y-yes?” I stammered.

            His eyes narrowed at me. He took his free hand and jabbed it into his heart.

            “That,” he said. “That is what you aim for when trying to kill someone.”

            My mouth wouldn’t form any sort of coherent reply. It opened and closed so many times I lost count. No sound came out other than small noises of distress and embarrassment. My inability to speak was so distracting that neither of us noticed that Asuna had moved until Kirito grasped both of my shoulders tightly and yelped in pain.

            Asuna held up my arrow and frowned at me.

            “Barbed? Really?” she said.

            Kirito dramatically slumped back down to the floor. He seemed relatively fine, but he was certainly fussing about the pain. Asuna gave me a funny look and glanced down at the bloodied arrow in her hands.

            “Do you want this back?” she asked.

            She held it out to me. My brain instantly considered where the arrow had just previously been. I took a few steps back, shaking my head, and then tripped and fell backwards onto the staircase. Asuna sighed and shook her head.

            “Two men, sprawled on the stairs, and for what?” she said.

            Frowning up at Asuna, I wondered why she wasn’t making a clear move to kill me. Perhaps this was such a ridiculous situation that she couldn’t be bothered. However, that thought vanished when I realized how she planned to return the arrow. She brought her fist down so quickly I was barely able to dodge.

            “Let me make something _perfectly_ clear, Eugeo,” she said. “If I don’t get what I want in the next thirty days, I’ll be highly displeased, as I have to return this sorry excuse for a hacker to his executioners on time. You killing him beforehand doesn’t do me any good.”

            I forgot my place in the heat of the moment.

            “Well, I don’t want him dead either, but it’s my job!” I exclaimed.

            It was too late once the words left my mouth. I covered my face with my hands, dreading knowing that the administrator would likely know about those careless words soon. The arrow dropped out of Asuna’s hand and clattered on the stairs. I heard the shuffling of a body moving against the floor—Kirito must have been sitting up.

            “Then maybe I’ll admit that I don’t exactly want to die, either,” he said.

            I removed my hands and stared down at him. He wasn’t looking up at me. His eyes locked on some point on the floor. He was smiling, though, which I found puzzling. I squinted a little, focusing more on his face. His eyes were filled with tears.

            “I thought I was fine with dying, since everyone I loved has already passed on,” he said, his voice barely audible. “But being this close to death…I realize I don’t want to go just yet…”

            Even Asuna seemed surprised at this.

            “Your family’s dead?” she asked.

            Kirito wiped his eyes off and forced himself back up into a standing position, as if that brief moment of emotion hadn’t happened. He pointed a finger up at me, issuing a challenge to me with eyes. He smirked despite the tearstains on his cheeks.

            “Thirty-seven more days!” he said. “Even if you don’t kill me, I’d like to see you stop us from stealing a Lightcube!”

            Those were his exact words. Yet his eyes seemed to plead with me, giving me a completely different challenge of their own. He didn’t want to fight me. He wanted something from me. When I didn’t clearly get the message, he mouthed two small words when Asuna turned her head. I perked up in surprise.

            Asuna turned back around, told him that they didn’t have much time, and then dragged him off by the collar of his jacket. As they dashed away, I gave him a curt, but firm, nod, telling him that I finally understood what he wanted from me. I pressed one hand to my racing heart and took a deep breath.

            His challenge to me wasn’t a challenge, but a cry for help.

            “Free me,” he’d said.


	8. Convincing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I know it's taking me a while. I've got a lot on my plate right now. I want ya'll to know I'm not dropping this. I will see it through to the very end. Please bear with me. As noted, I am open to any and all suggestions concerning content- and this might help things move faster as I do have to think up unique ideas for each chapter. Don't be afraid to make a suggestion!
> 
> Today's chapter is based from a prompt suggested by Animeloverlovescats here on AO3, mixed with a slight suggestion from my best friend.

_36 Days Left_

            “Alice, every time you try to help me, the scenario gets weirder,” I complained.

            For today’s stunt, Alice dressed me up in a costume that I presumed would stand out immensely on a ship where all of the residents were first of all humanoid and second of all dressed uniformly. Either the androids we watched over wore their typical plain white outfits or we Integrity Agents wore our matching uniforms. When and where Alice had procured _this_ was anyone’s guess, as well as why it fit _me_.

            “Look, since hiding and surprise attacking clearly doesn’t work for you, we’ve got to tackle this from the angle of—what will make Kirito pause enough to let you get close and rip out his spleen,” she said.

            I frowned.

            “I don’t want to rip out his spleen,” I said. “I don’t even know where his spleen _is_.”

            Alice grasped me by the shoulders and gave me a reassuring smile. A small part of me wondered if this “reassuring smile” was actually her way of toying with me. Perhaps she was doing this so she could laugh at the security tapes later. I suppose, in her shoes, I’d laugh. She’d talked me into wearing a bear costume, after all. To anyone but the person stuck in the suit, it certainly would be humorous.

            “Okay, well try for a stab to the liver or heart,” she said, letting go and slapping a knife into my palm. “Try to kill him in one stab, okay? It’s really messy if you don’t finish him off quickly. Especially considering his survivability.”

            I stared down at the knife and wondered how I might pull off failing this one.

            “You want me to just run up and stab him while wearing a bear costume?” I said.

            She nodded.

            “He won’t be expecting it in the least,” Alice said.

            Grinning, she whirled me around to face the door and gave me a strong slap to the back. I stumbled forward, yelping when I realized if I tripped I’d stab myself because of how I was holding the knife. I clumsily readjusted my hold on the knife as I tripped forward. Glancing back at Alice, I gave her a strained smile.

            Of course, nothing could prepare me for the final step, which she forgot to mention. No less than fifteen minutes later, I found myself crammed in a hidden spot in the wall with a peeping window that was essentially a fake vent over my eyes. She left me there, told me she’d try to feed digital cues to Kirito as he hacked his way through various doors that the Lightcube tech was in my general direction, and then I could jump out at him to catch him off guard and claim his life.

            I sighed and glanced down at my watch. It was early morning still. It might take all day for them to pass by this point. I hoped it wouldn’t; I wanted to get out and grab lunch at some point. About twenty minutes of silence passed before my communication device started blaring in my ear.

            “Agent Thirty-Two!”

            I jumped at the sound, forgetting in that instant that there was no room to move unless I was choosing to leap out of the hiding spot. My head slammed into the door. I groaned and grasped for the button to answer.

            “Agent Thirty-Two speaking,” I said, trying to hide the pain that was evident in my voice.

            A pause was followed by brief static.

            “Agent Thirty-Two, I am contacting you on a private wavelength about concerns raised over your performance and behavior,” the administrator said. “Agent Two was reviewing audio from your encounter yesterday and claims that you told the target you didn’t want to kill him. Is this true?”

            Panic set in. I had to think up an excuse, and fast.

            “W-well, if he thinks he can trust me, won’t that make it easier to kill him?” I asked.

            The radio silence that followed my statement unsettled me. If she had Agent Two, Fanatio, reviewing my attempts, then I had to be extra careful what I said at top volume. I also had to make sure that my attempts looked genuine.

            I peered out of the grate in the door, searching the hall for signs of Kirito and Asuna while I waited for the dreaded response to my lame excuse. They turned into the hallway far enough down that I could barely make them out, but the sounds of their voices carried enough for me to know it was, in fact, them.

            “I’ll be keeping a close eye on you, Agent Thirty-Two,” the administrator said.

            I swallowed nervously.

            “Y-yes, of course,” I said. “Target sighted. Preparing for another attempt.”

            “Confirmed.”

            Just as quickly as she’d arrived on the radio, she’d gone silent again. I sighed a breath of slight relief at having dodged an interrogation for the moment, but I knew that sooner or later I’d be called in and questioned as a traitor. Unless I could truly sell the fact that I was making serious attempts on Kirito’s life, it was only a matter of time before I became a target, too.

            Trying to rid myself of the thought, I threw myself out of the door to surprise attack the unsuspecting pair. As soon as the door flew open, Asuna leapt back, her hand reaching for her rapier. Kirito, though, seemed more surprised that I’d burst out of the wall. Instead of reaching for his swords to block my knife, he dropped something in his hands and ducked with a yelp.

            Except, when I looked down and saw him slam his head into the staircase in front of him, I realized it wasn’t a duck. He’d dropped a banana peel on the ground and immediately slipped on it. I dropped my arms in defeat and sighed. Asuna, apparently no longer viewing me as a legitimate threat, came over and placed a hand on my shoulder.

            “I think you might have actually stabbed him if he hadn’t done that,” she said. “But I do have one question.”

            I frowned at her.

            “What’s with the bear costume?” she asked.

            Rolling my eyes, I headed over to Kirito and stared down at him. He was splayed on the stairs, unconscious. I glanced over at Asuna, mouthed an apology, and then picked a not-too-lethal spot to stab him: his calf muscle. Asuna dashed over and yanked me up to my feet.

            “What…what was that for?!” she asked.

            I grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and pulled her close. I couldn’t risk Fanatio overhearing anything I said, so I hoped she’d forgive me later for being so rude. Asuna looked ready to punch me, but she relaxed when I started whispering.

            “My boss is onto me about not wanting Kirito dead,” I said. “I have to at least make it look like I’m trying here.”

            She furrowed her eyebrows and whispered back.

            “A stab wound there isn’t convincing,” she said. “You’re not going to be able to pull this off if you aren’t willing to actually put him out of commission. You know that, right?”

            Asuna had a point. I could try as hard as I wished to keep from severely injuring or harming Kirito, but if Fanatio watched me through cameras, a stab to the leg wasn’t going to prove my loyalty. It was simply a means of getting around killing him, even if I didn’t state it. I lowered my head.

            “You need to think about how willing you are to desert your organization if you’re going to intentionally avoid killing him,” Asuna said. “There’d be no shame in joining us, but either way you know that Kirito’s going to die. He’s got a little over a month left. Is deserting to prove a point even really worth it?”

            I locked eyes with her.

            “Why are you trying to help me?” I asked.

            She shrugged.

            “I’m still going to protect him so that I can return him in one piece to his executioner,” she said. “I know that deep down, you’re just a man trying to do his job. You don’t want us dead. You’re trying to protect what we came to steal. I don’t want you in my way, but if I can convince you to join us, it might save my neck.”

            Her words haunted me as I left the scene to return the bear costume to Alice. She asked if I completed the mission, so I told her that perhaps the bear costume wasn’t as much of an element of surprise as she’d originally thought. I filled out a quick report about the failure and returned to my quarters to brainstorm some more.

            I couldn’t know that something unexpected was afoot.

 

_In the Central Conference Room of the UW-Centoria_

            “You’re saying you’ll pay me five million credits to dispose of this guy?”

            Quinella, the administrator of the Integrity Agents, and also the overseer of the project concerning the Axiom androids on the UW-Centoria, lifted a case of genuine cash and set it down on the table, opening it for the sniper to see. The girl casually brushed her sea-green locks of hair behind her ears and then reached out to inspect the bills. Quinella smiled. She could find no fault with them.

            “Two million upfront, the other three when you confirm he’s dead,” she said. “My Integrity Agents aren’t highly-trained killers. They’re simply parts of the experiment as well, although they don’t know it. It’s been amusing trying to coax Agent Thirty-Two into killing this intruder for me, but I can’t have Kirito digging in the ship’s computers any longer. He’s too perceptive.”

            Just saying his name left a sour taste in her mouth. She knew who Kirito was. Anyone in the galaxy who paid attention to intergalactic news knew who he was. He’d pulled one of the most famous stunts in the history of the Federation. In trying to steal information that proved the government’s corruption, as some sort of “do-gooder” vigilante, he’d claimed the life of the Federation’s president.

            After all the energy spent to unite all of the separate planets and nations under one flag, the Federation elected a president as a figurehead to govern them all. Rebellions weren’t happening. People lived at peace. And yet, this upstart tore his way through a top-secret facility to steal information and expose some kind of truth about the Federation. In his mission to uncover whatever he thought was being hidden from the people, he’d taken two blades and run them through Kayaba Akihiko’s body.

            And now, he accompanied a rebel spy to steal from the UW-Centoria, one of the Federation’s best-kept secrets. Quinella couldn’t let him come close to the truth again. She glared at the sniper, waiting impatiently for her answer.

            “I’ll put more than just a single bullet in his head for that price,” the girl said.

            Quinella smiled. It was a faint smile. The corners of her lips barely turned upwards as she closed the case and pushed it over to her new hire, a sniper who went by the codename Sinon. The girl picked up the case and turned to leave, but Quinella stood up to stop her.

            “I’m not finished,” she said firmly.

            Sinon glanced over her shoulder and frowned.

            “If I determine that my own Agent Thirty-Two has gone rogue,” she said, blinking her eyes slowly. “I’ll double your pay and request that you kill him as well.”

            Sinon’s eyes widened.

            “D-double?” she stammered.

            She had this sniper wrapped around her finger.

            “Yes,” she said. “I want Kirito and Asuna dead, but if I choose to alter the list of targets and add Eugeo, I’ll pay you double. Integrity Agents are considerably difficult to kill, after all. They’re not as human as those two are.”

            “How long will it be before you know if you’ll include this Eugeo in your list of persons wanted dead?” Sinon asked.

            Quinella tapped her fingers against each other.

            “I’ll decided within twenty-four hours,” she said.

            But she’d already decided. She simply toyed with the sniper at this point, to see if she’d take the bait. And she had. In twenty-four hours, she’d contact Sinon and inform her that Agent Thirty-Two, codenamed Eugeo, also required a bullet to the temple.

            After all, he’d retained too much of his humanity following the procedure. He was starting to show signs of struggling with the commands she’d given him, despite having transformed him, just like every other agent, into mostly a machine. Plus, if Kirito found the Lightcubes, that meant that Eugeo had a chance of discovering most of his person wasn’t real anymore. She couldn’t let him discover that and tell the others.

            She picked up a pen and made a note on her findings in the course of the Axiom android project. On the dateline, she noted her usual dealings with the androids. Just below it, she added an entry for Integrity Agent Cyborg Unit 32.

            “32 malfunctioning. Failed specimen.”


	9. Chain Reaction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: It's been too long, guys/gals/nonbinary pals. So, plot seems to be officially rolling. Now, I know I put Eugeo in immediate danger, but I swear to you on my entire life I will not kill him. That's a breach of this unspoken rule in our fandom. I shall poke and prod a little, but I will not kill him he's too good of a boy and doesn't deserve that.

            I yawned and stared at the words of my agent handbook numbly. I wasn’t actually reading it; I was trying to sort out my own thoughts. Asuna was right—my attempts no longer looked convincing at all. If I wanted to keep my job, I’d have to either get better at fake-attacking Kirito, or I’d have to give in and actually kill him. I dropped my face into the book and groaned.

            No matter how I looked at this, I didn’t want to kill him. I’d heard a little bit about him as a person and it seemed almost wrong to kill him without hearing him out first. He was just there as Asuna’s tool, after all. Kirito was already a dead man and had no true motivation for being here other than being out of a jail cell.

              _“Then maybe I’ll admit that I don’t exactly want to die, either.”_

            Kirito obviously had something to live for, if he said something like that. He was a man who had lost his family and his freedom, and yet there was something in this world that he wanted to keep breathing for. I dropped the book down into my lap and stared down at the floor. So, then, what was I living for?

            My memory had been wiped before coming to this ship. I was a blank slate when I showed up in the office on the first day, reporting in as Agent Thirty-Two. I followed orders, took advice, and never stepped out of line up until this assignment. But what motivation did I have for doing this job? It’s not like I was being paid or given any perks. Perhaps I could consider receiving food, clothing, and a place to live as my payment.

            I just went with it. Why question a system that doesn’t harm me, after all?

            Yet compared to this man with nothing positive happening in his life, I didn’t seem happy. He smiled and laughed as he went about his business, with the knowledge that he only has days left to live hanging over him. A man whom the world hated enough to execute him, and he still smiled brighter than I did.

            “What a strange person you are, Kirito,” I said, sighing.

            I stood up, shook my head, slapped my cheeks, and then took a deep breath.

            “Enough speculation,” I said. “I’ve got a man to pretend to kill.”

            Today’s fake attempt was one of those elaborate setups where you push a button or pull a string on one end, it goes through a series of chain reactions until it finally sets off the death trap at the other end. I’d spent all night making one that I knew wouldn’t actually harm Kirito, but I had to admit, the test run did prove it could cause real damage if I was off in the slightest.

            Rest in peace to the radish I used as a dummy.

            In order for this trap to work, I needed to time setting it off perfectly. Of course, this also involved me stalling Kirito and Asuna just enough to let the near-miss happen. I’d carefully marked out a spot on the floor where Kirito needed to stand to make the attempt look real enough without hurting him. I had to mentally note the line where the machine would actually land, so that my measurements looked like a miscalculation instead of an intentional miss.

            So, when they rounded the corner and I dashed out into the hallway to stall them, I was pretty confident that things would go absolutely according to plan. They stopped in their tracks, blinking at me and waiting for whatever I might pull out today. I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to lean on the wall. I missed, falling over a little too far. Asuna rolled her eyes and stepped forward.

            “Look, Eugeo, we’re busy,” she said. “If you’re not going to pull something, we’re just going to keep heading towards the room where the Lightcubes are stored.”

            I straightened back up, placed one hand on my hip, and smiled.

            “I am most definitely pulling something,”  I said.

            As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I’d screwed up. Both Asuna and Kirito fixed me with a pitiful gaze. Kirito came over to me, placed a hand on my shoulder, and shook his head. My face burned with embarrassment.

            _He’s touching me_ , I thought.

            “You’re just finding excuses to see us,” Kirito said. “And that’s okay, but we can’t afford to be stalled because you want to fake kill us.”

            I scrunched my shoulders up.

            “I-I’m not faking anything!” I said, loudly.

            Kirito frowned and looked around. He must have immediately connected the dots that I was trying to avoid being caught in the act of faking an assassination attempt. Sighing, he took a step back. His feet were planted firmly right where the machine would slam down the blade. It would come down in about a minute.

            “Do you really think at this point that you’re fooling them?” he asked, his voice sounding serious. “I’d love to optimistically believe that you’re not in deep shit, buddy, I would, but you’ve failed to kill me so many times it’s either planned that you’re not going to kill me or you just really, really suck at killing people.”

            I laughed awkwardly.

            “Why not both?” I said, smiling.

            I needed to get him to move. His head would be split open if he stayed there any longer. But he didn’t seem to want to move at the moment. I could have just told him, but that might take too long. So, instead, I grasped his right shoulder.

            “I’m sorry, but…”

            “Huh?”

            Before he could register what was going on, I shoved him roughly in the shoulder, causing him to stagger backwards. He gave me a weird look, but then realized what was happening when the guillotine-like blade dropped down between us. Somehow, I hadn’t thought about the fact that in that process, my arm was still in the space where the blade would fall. Pain throbbed just before where my elbow should be.

            I gazed down at my arm. I’d just completely severed it to shove Kirito out of the way without a second thought. Two things immediately were clear to me. I perhaps had more of a crush on him than I was willing to admit, and Kirito was right about me.

            The severed limb exposed wiring and machinery. Sparks danced from the end of the stump of my left arm as I stared at it. A gasp escaped from my throat, followed by several more. Panic set in. My arm wasn’t _real_. It was a piece of intricate machinery that was covered with skin and nerves and veins to make me _seem_ real.

            “He just…he really was up to something!” Kirito exclaimed.

            But I wasn’t worried about his shock. He was fine. He’d avoided precisely what I wanted him to avoid. I was too absorbed in my own shock. Shock at suddenly having nothing where my arm used to be. Shocked at seeing what I was truly made up of. I staggered backwards into the wall and slipped down it, sitting down at the bottom.

            “I’m…I’m not…I’m just…”

            My eyes remained glued to the stump. I lifted my right hand shakily and touched it to the area. A conflicting mixture of machine and flesh stared back at me. I was bleeding, but I was also sizzling. My stomach turned—but did I even have a normal stomach? Was it just my arm or was Kirito right? Was I one of the androids? I felt real.

            Kirito came into my vision, crouching down in front of me. He reached his hands out and gently grasped what was left of my arm, studying it with a poker face. Asuna crouched down beside him. He took one of the swords out of his jacket and used it to cut part of his shirt off. Then, he wrapped it around my arm and tied it into a tourniquet.

            “I don’t know if that will slow the bleeding…you’re not exactly made of the same parts as us,” he said, frowning.

            “Why…why are you…?” I stammered.

            Kirito gave me a curious smile.

            “You just saved my life,” he said. “Well…I’m pretty certain you set the trap that almost caused my death, but in the end that isn’t the important part. You saved me, so I am going to help you now.”

            Asuna gave him a look that betrayed how uncertain she felt about whatever he was planning to do. The way he worded that, it sounded like tying a tourniquet wasn’t the only thing he was doing to help me out. I nervously locked eyes with him. He was smiling calmly, as if nothing terrifying had just happened at all.

            “There is no way you’re going to be able to cover up what you did with some kind of well-crafted lie, Eugeo,” he said, extending his hand to me. “But I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. The three of us will escape this place as soon as we steal a couple Lightcubes.”

            I blinked at him.

            “W-wait!” Asuna said. “We only need one!”

            Kirito turned to her, giving her a serious glare.

            “Eugeo can’t leave the ship without his data,” he said. “And like hell I’m letting you make off with his data so he can be handed over to your people as a tool. He’s a much higher-functioning android than the obvious test subjects. He’s got his own free will. He gets the right to keep his own Lightcube.”

            Asuna shook her head.

            “Androids don’t have _blood_ , Kirito,” she said. “He doesn’t have a Lightcube.”

            “He does,” Kirito insisted. “The moment I first scanned him I knew that. Cyborg, android; it doesn’t matter. He’s partially stored somewhere in the main housing for the Lightcubes. He’s liable to shut off if he gets out of range of it.”

            They continued to bicker about whether or not I was a piece of tech somewhere in the deeper parts of the administration side of the ship. I tuned them both out, feeling rather numb about the situation. Kirito was right; the cameras could prove that I’d at the last moment chosen to lose an arm rather than take Kirito’s life. I couldn’t defend myself.

            So, was my only option to go with these two?

            I was abruptly yanked out of my indecision when something stung my forehead. I didn’t have time to register what it was before Kirito grasped my arm, pulled me up to my feet, and then took off sprinting. Asuna followed suit. I stumbled along after him. Something warm felt like it was running down between my eyes. It hit my nose and veered down my cheek.

            _Blood?_ I wondered.

            My hand let go of Kirito’s. He stopped and turned around to me, waving for me to keep coming. I lifted my hand slowly, touched it to the warm substance that tickled my skin, and then held it back in front of my face. My fingertips were wet with crimson.

            “Hey, Eugeo, you in there, buddy?” Kirito asked.

            He waved a hand in front of my face. I blinked slowly.

            “What…” I mumbled.

            “A bullet,” he said. “Someone’s shooting at us. We can’t stay right here.”

            “Shooting…”

            He nodded.

            “Yes, shooting,” he said. “A sniper, by the looks of it. You got lucky, they just nicked your—oi! Eugeo!”

            My eyes rolled back into my head and everything went black.


	10. Accidental Traitor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Yoo-hoo, big summer blowout! JK it's so not summer it's freezing. It's just me and some Eugeo I promise he's fine I didn't mean to cause stress with the arm. He'll be okay. Cross my heart. <3

            “Oh, and I’m just supposed to accept that you want me to free this random Centoria employee because he had a moment and shoved you out of the way of his death trap?”

            The sound hit my ears before I fully registered what was going on.

            “Well, he’s clearly defected if he’s trying to save me.”

            “Use your brain, Kirito. He’s not your ally. He’s just mixed up about being ordered to kill you. This doesn’t mean you can just keep him in the bathroom.”

            “I don’t intend to LEAVE him there!”

            I’d just been in a hallway, preparing to accidentally fail another assassination attempt. My eyes slowly opened, revealing, just as the voices indicated, that I was in a rather cramped bathroom with dimmed lighting. I tried to sit up. My head ached. It felt like some blunt force had been applied to the back of my skull.

            “The Integrity Agents will deal with Eugeo if we just leave him somewhere. It’s not my job to babysit a murder convict and his new best friend the failure assassin. I came here to do a job, Kirito. I should have just left you in your jail cell to rot.”

            “Don’t think you can get your hands on a Lightcube without my help. You know jack shit about computers.”

            “Are you _insulting_ me?”

            “Maybe I was a little too blunt.”

            Kirito and Asuna were outside of this bathroom bickering. I groaned. How did I end up in _this_ predicament? I had to go report back to the administrator. She needed to believe that my attempt was genuine. I didn’t have time to be tossed in a bathroom by the enemy. It was weird—I was trying to find the floor with my left hand, but couldn’t seem to touch it. I turned my head down to see if I was just that dazed.

            “I could send you back to Blackiron right now. I’d drop you off, come back, use Eugeo as bait to get what I want, and then my mission is done. No problems at all.”

            “WH-WHERE’S MY ARM?!”

            “Oh my god, he’s awake!”

            I stumbled backwards and fell into the bathtub. It was, to my shock, full of warm water. I felt a shock a little stronger than static run up my left side and into my neck. Fingers suddenly grasped my righthand wrist and yanked me up out of the water. I gasped and again tried to use the absent left arm to grab onto something. Another hand clutched my left shoulder.

            “Calm down, I gotcha, buddy.”

            Blinking, I focused on the face in front of me. Inky black hair. Eyes that looked like the starscape through the windows of the UW-Centoria. Soft features. This was the face of the man I should have killed days ago.

            “K-Kirito…”

            “Yeah, it’s me,” he said, smiling.

            There was something sweet and genuine about that smile. My heart started to pound against my ribcage. He pulled me away from the bathtub and let go of me to hand me a towel. I mumbled my thanks and picked it up, but I hesitated.

            “I might…how do I do this…with just…one hand?”

            He laughed.

            “Do you want some help?” he asked. “I figure it’ll take you a little time to get used to.”

            I shook my head and pressed the towel against myself, trying to dab myself dry using the only hand I had left. He chuckled. When it didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, I dropped the towel back on the counter.

            “Here, why don’t we just dry your clothes off instead?” Kirito offered.

            Before I could say anything, Kirito was unzipping my top and pulling it off. He slipped my shirt over the door and then proceeded to pull my pants off, leaving me in nothing but my underwear. I could feel myself short-circuiting. My face was hot just thinking about the fact that I was exposed so much in front of him.

            “You’re definitely more muscular than you look with clothes on,” he noted. “How do they even overlay muscle over all that machinery?”

            He reached over and gingerly touched my abdomen.

            “Wh-what are you doing?!” I exclaimed.

            “How much of you is robotic?” he asked.

            I swallowed.

            “I…I have no idea,” I said. “I didn’t think _any_ of me was until…”

            Trailing off, I stared down at the stump where my arm had been this morning. The image of the bits of machinery and wiring sticking out of that stump came back to me, reminding me that I wasn’t what I thought I was.

            Humming, Kirito pressed his ear against my belly. His eyes slipped shut.

            “Wh-what are y-you doing?!”

            “I should be asking the same thing!”

            I snapped my head up to see Asuna standing in the doorway, red-faced. She pointed at me and shook her head.

            “Where the hell are your clothes at?!”

            I waved my hand in front of me dismissively.

            “I-I fell in the bath!”

            Kirito sprung to his feet and grasped my shoulders, grinning at me with sparkling eyes. He ignored Asuna’s entrance altogether.

            “You’re a cyborg!” he said. “Not all of you is a robot, there’s no machine in your gut, just some regular flesh-and-blood organs!”

            “Kirito, is now really the time to be playing with your would-be-killer?” Asuna asked.

            I frowned.

            “How do you know what’s inside my gut?” I asked.

            He laughed and patted my shoulder.

            “You’re hungry,” he said. “Your stomach is growling.”

            He turned around to Asuna, opened his mouth to speak, and then was immediately met by clothes thrown into his face. Kirito pulled the clothes off of himself and frowned, staring down at them.

            “Put some clothes on him and get out here, we have to figure out a plan now that your one-armed robot friend is stuck with us,” she said.

            “He’s…not a robot,” Kirito said, clearly exasperated.

            “I don’t care what he is, clothe him!”

 

            After slipping into Kirito’s clothing, I awkwardly sat in the corner sipping on a cup of tea that Asuna gave me while they discussed their options. Their goal of trying to steal a Lightcube was still their priority, but from what I understood, the cameras picked up on me saving Kirito’s life. I was either stuck with them or stuck answering for my traitorous behavior.

            I wasn’t much of a help to them. About all I knew about the Lightcubes was where they were located. I had access to many places in the ship as an Integrity Agent, but the main bay where the Lightcubes were stored was off-limits to even Bercouli, Agent One.

            “By now, I’m sure the administrator has locked me out of the system anyways,” I said. “She’s not someone who takes lightly to traitors. That would explain the professional sniper who is on board the ship shooting at us.”

            Kirito smirked.

            “I know that sniper,” he said. “Her codename is Sinon. Isn’t she one of _your_ buddies, Asuna?”

            Asuna frowned.

            “Yes, she sometimes takes jobs for the Agents of the Blood Oath,” she said. “But she’s not directly affiliated with us. She takes bounties, you could say. This administrator of the Integrity Agents probably paid her a pretty price to plant a bullet in Eugeo’s head.”

            Kirito shook his head.

            “I didn’t say she worked for you, I said she was your buddy,” he said. “Weren’t you, like, best friends back in high school or something?”

            Asuna sighed and walked away from the table. Kirito carried on, ignoring her frustration with him.

            “Sinon was the person hired to catch me after I killed President Heathcliff in self-defense,” he explained. “Fortunately, she used a tranquilizer and didn’t kill me, because her aim is unparalleled. I could only block a few of her shots with my swords before she finally nabbed me.”

            I think Asuna and I had the same look of disbelief painted across out faces.

            “You…used those swords of yours…to deflect tranquilizer bullets?” Asuna said.

            He nodded.

            “You have got to be the weirdest person I know,” she muttered. “Followed closely by the guy who put antifreeze in your spaghetti.”

            “H-hey!”

            “While wearing a mustache, Eugeo, she has a point,” Kirito said, waving a finger at me. “That was pretty weird.”

            “Anyways.”

            Asuna cleared her throat, bringing him back to the topic at hand. She walked back over to the table, jabbing a finger at a spot in the map. It was a line marking the back way to get into the main room where the Lightcubes were stored.

            “Here’s the plan, boys,” she said. “We’re going in the back way. Eugeo will be alerting of us any and all traps or security measures we’ll need to get through. I’ll be providing the defense. Kirito, you already know your job is to hack through the security measures. We go in, we steal the easiest Lightcube to get to, and we get out. We escape immediately using one of the escape pods. They can fit three people with ease.”

            I frowned at her.

            “Th-three?” I stammered.

            She nodded.

            “As much as I don’t want another person to deal with to make this mission more difficult, you’re still a human being and if you don’t escape, Sinon will kill you,” she said. “She’s not one to just take her job lightly based on pity. Behind the barrel of her Hecate II, you’re just a target. She’s a different person when she’s on the job.”

            I bit my lip.

            “I don’t remember anything before being assigned as an Integrity Agent on the UW-Centoria,” I said. “I don’t know who I could go to if I left. All I have here is Alice.”

            Asuna smiled gently and placed her hand on my shoulder.

            “I promise, I’ll take you back to HQ and try to see where you came from,” she said. “You probably have a family somewhere. And they probably miss you very much. And when we find the evidence we need to question your administrator and end this project, we’ll ensure that Alice—no, all of the Integrity Agents—are safely removed from the UW-Centoria as well.”

            Kirito perked up.

            “So, then, it’s settled!” he said.

            Asuna and I frowned up at him.

            “What’s settled?” she said.

            He pointed a finger at me and grinned.

            “We’re stealing Eugeo, too!”

            I sat my tea down and placed my hand over my face. Groaning, I had to remind myself that I was the idiot that thought he was cute. I couldn’t help but smile, though. In my own silly way, I pretended he was simply just stealing my heart.

            “You can’t steal a person, Kirito!” Asuna said, reaching over to whack him.

            “You were the one calling him a robot!” he whined.

            I laughed. Maybe tagging along with these two wouldn’t be so bad.

            “KIRITO!”

            Maybe.


	11. A Whisper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I could not keep my hands off the angst. Please forgive me. ;-;

            The plan was to head out in the morning and make the final attempt to steal a Lightcube. Kirito decided to keep me in his room for the night, although they fought about the issue since I hadn’t seen a doctor about the removed limb. She finally consented to letting him take me and left, but not before giving him a full rundown of how to get me cleaned up so as to prevent infection.

            Thus, I was stuck, once again, topless and extremely close to Kirito. He unwrapped the makeshift bandages around the stump and grimaced as he gazed at the bloody mess of severed flesh and machinery parts. He picked up a wet cloth and pressed it to the exposed area. I sucked in a breath sharply.

            “Sorry,” he said. “I think this is right where the machinery met your real body. I don’t think if I found your arm I could reattach it.”

            I shook my head.

            “Oh, uh, that’s okay…” I said. “It’s…actually weirder to think that you could.”

            He hummed and continued to clean up the area. I didn’t know what to talk about. For days I’d been attempting to kill this guy and only exchanging words during those moments. Now, he was cleaning up my wound like nothing had happened. He picked up a real bandage and started to wrap the stump up.

            “Um, why did you kill the President in self-defense?” I asked.

            It was about all I had to go with. He blinked up at me.

            “Oh, that?” he said. “I was trying to steal information to send out to the Republic.”

            “The Republic?”

            He nodded. He tucked in the end of the bandage and sat back to admire his handiwork. With a smile, he handed me a shirt. I managed to pull it on with just the one arm. It was going to take some getting used to. Kirito then moved over and pulled the bandages off of my forehead to look at the spot where the bullet had grazed me.

            “Basically, a group of planets who all were following the same ruler,” he said. “They were hiding information from the people, like this project. I wanted to find proof of the things the government was hiding, so I snuck into the most secure government building in the entire Republic. I hadn’t anticipated President Heathcliff would be there.”

            Frowning, he picked up a small cotton ball doused with antiseptic and dabbed it on my forehead. When it hit the cut, it stung. I winced. I felt a cool rush of air against the spot, soothing it. I opened my eyes and realized then that he was blowing on it. Embarrassed, I blushed and tried to refrain from pulling back.

            “You’re pretty hot,” Kirito commented.

            “I-I’m what!” I exclaimed.

            His palm pressed against my cheek. He was cool. I belatedly understood that he meant temperature. He brushed my hair out of my eyes and resumed cleaning up the cut. When he was done, he placed another bandage on top of it and smiled kindly at me.

            “I think you’ll live,” he said, playfully punching my right shoulder.

            Kirito got up and walked over to the bed. He picked up the pillows on it and fluffed them up, and then pulled back the sheets. He hopped up on the right side with a tablet, then glanced over at me and made a patting motion on the bed beside him.

            “Oh, uh, I’m, uh, fine over here on the couch,” I said.

            The very thought of sharing a bed with him made my stomach flutter as if I’d swallowed a family of butterflies who were all trying to escape. I’d be close enough to him that I could feel his warmth all night. The very thought made me blush even more fiercely. No, I wasn’t about to share a bed with him.

            “C’mon, Eugeo,” he said, hopping off of the bed and coming over to me.

            I immediately dropped down on my side on the couch, facing my back to him. He walked all the way over to me anyways, and instead of making a polite request for me to move over to the bed, he scooped me up in his arms and carried me over to the bed, ignoring my flustered protesting. He laid me down on the left side of the bed and hurried back over to sit on the right side.

            “Injured people don’t lay on the couch,” he said, staring down at the tablet and playing with it. “Tell him, Yui.”

            “That’s right!” the little AI girl chimed in. “Papa never lets injured people be uncomfy!”

            I rolled onto my right side and stared at Kirito as he tapped his fingers on the tablet. I clutched the pillow under my head with my fingers and tried not to think about the fact that he’d be crawling into the sheets with me once he was done doing whatever he was doing.

            “Why…does she call you papa?” I found myself asking.

            For the briefest of moments, his eyes met mine.

            “I modeled her…after my daughter,” he said.

            I wasn’t sure what to say about that. It seemed pretty weird. Plus, my heart burned with jealousy. He has a daughter, which means somewhere, he has a partner. Unless he adopted a child as a single parent. Why was this bothering me? I hurriedly shoved the thoughts into the back of my mind.

            “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

            My entire body tensed up.

            “That’s really creepy,” he said. “But it’s all I’ve got left of her. It’s all I’ve got left of any family. I have no one to go back to. That’s why I carelessly tried to fight the government, you know? That government killed Yui. And her mother. And my parents. And my little sister.”

            He angrily tossed the tablet off of the bed and onto the floor. The AI started saying something in protest, but I couldn’t make out what she was trying to say. Kirito yanked off his shirt, tossed it off of the bed as well, and then slipped under the covers with his back facing me. The lights went out, I presume because he hit a switch or pressed a button on his side of the room.

            For a while, I stared at his bare back. There were scars there, some more recent than others. I wondered what my past looked like, after hearing brief snippets of his. Perhaps forgetting it all as an Integrity Agent was a gift, if it was anything like his. But it made my heart sink to think that I could have loved ones I didn’t remember, living or dead. There was no way to tell, of course, unless I went snooping through the administrator’s things.

            “I’m sorry.”

            Kirito’s shoulders relaxed a little, indicating he’d heard me.

            “I wasn’t thinking it was creepy.”

            No response.

            “I don’t remember if I have anyone out there. I think…maybe by remembering your daughter like this, it’s better than forgetting completely, though, right?”

            Finally, he turned over and faced me. He reached out a hand and pressed it against my cheek. I felt grateful to the dark. He’d never be able to see me blushing. But then, he did something unexpected that made my heart leap into my throat. He rested his forehead against mine. His hand left my cheek and reached down to find my fingers. I felt him latch onto them like a child dangling from his mother’s hand in a public place, seeking the comfort of a familiar person.

            “K-Kirito?” I stammered.

            He hummed.

            “You’re really warm, Eugeo.”

            The heat he felt was certainly my embarrassment. His voice sounded different than usual. His nose and mouth were so close to mine, I briefly entertained the thought of our lips touching. That would be inappropriate, though. I was certain, based off of the tone difference in his words, that he simply needed someone to comfort him right now. He might not have even been aware that he was touching me.

            “Trust me…” he mumbled.

            His eyes slipped closed. His voice was barely above a whisper.

            “You don’t want to remember…your life before this.”

            My eyes widened.

            “What do you know about me?” I asked.

            But I was too late. He was sound asleep, as if nothing had happened. My heart raced in my chest. Kirito knew me. Not just from our encounters here. He knew me from before I became an Integrity Agent.

            So why hadn’t he told me sooner?


	12. Subject Thirty-Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Okay so with the previous chapter going the way it did, I figured this was a good spot to add this flashback. What a flashback? Noooo. Yes. Yes a flashback. Alksjglh. It's noted in the fic tags that there would be some graphic stuff so, here's a few chapter warnings: tw for implied gore, body horror. 
> 
> And since I know you all will kill me, please remember: it's a flashback, the characters harmed within are presently fine.

_XXX years prior…_

            “Eu…Eugeo?”

            A shaky hand reached upwards, trying to grasp the tear-stained face in front of it. It was pale. Deathly pale. It was stopped by a woman with long, silvery hair. The man crying let out a scream and threw himself her. She calmly reached out and caught him by the neck. Her eyes, like mirrors, bored into his dark irises. A condescending look gazed down at the man as he clawed at her arms.

            “Kirigaya Kazuto, was it?”

            He stopped flailing when she tightened her grip around his neck. He refused to look away. She frowned, reached to him with her other hand, and stroked his cheek. He grimaced, repulsed by her soft touch.

            “I remember you from the last time,” she said. “You’re always trying to get in my way, aren’t you? But your rogue actions will only land you in jail eventually. Do right by your dead wife and daughter. Stop meddling with me before I send you to join them.”

            Despite the fingers grasping his throat, he managed to speak.

            “Don’t…take Eugeo…too…” he pleaded. “Don’t kill…him…too…”

            Those unnatural eyes of hers flicked over to the unmoving body on the ground. His hand had dropped while she was talking to this man. Her goal wasn’t to kill the blond man, but the way he was splayed on the ground mad him look dead. She sucked her teeth and nodded to the man next to her.

            “Bercouli! Grab experiment thirty-two and make sure he doesn’t die.”

            The man saluted her.

            “Yes, administrator.”

            The man in her grasp started to struggle again.

            “No…no…please…Eugeo…he’s…he’s all I have…left…”

            She narrowed her eyes at the dark-haired man and squeezed his throat even tighter. His breathing started to sound desperate. The administrator finally dropped him. He fell to the ground gently touching his neck and gasping for air. Bercouli dragged the blond man’s body onto the ship.

            “Eu…ge…o…”

            “Try to prevent our takeoff and I’ll find someone else to replace Eugeo,” she said icily. “Human bodies are just vessels for me to play with. I don’t care about him as a human being. I care about him as a test subject. One move of resistance from you and I’ll separate his head from his body. Understood, Kirigaya?”

            He gave her a slight nod as he continued to gulp down air. With a smirk, she stood back up and boarded the ship. As her group took off to return to the UW-Centoria, she stared down at the speck of the man in all-black, wondering why this unrelated man meant so much to him. He wasn’t his brother, nor was he a cousin. But it didn’t matter to her. She had what she’d come for.

            She took her prize back to the UW-Centoria into the lab and strapped him down to an operating table. He was alive—enough so that this would still work. She’d had to break a few ribs in order to take him; he’d fought against her hard. But he’d lost. His eyes opened up, the bright green irises going dull from the pain in his chest. She pressed a hand to his cheek.

            “Good morning, thirty-two,” she said, smiling.

            His eyes widened. He tried to move, but the restraints were so tight the best he could do was fidget. She chuckled and ran a finger down his chest. Yes, this was the perfect specimen. His body was in good shape, despite the injuries he’d suffered in the procurement phase. He’d be able to withstand the alterations.

            “Don’t worry,” she said. “You won’t remember any of this.”

            She lifted her head and flipped her hair.

            “Chudelkin, the saw, please.”

            The man’s eyes widened even more. That was the expression she liked to see before she created her agents. The raw expression of fear when the subject knew that they were about to endure pain. Bercouli had been the least fun, alongside Scheta, but the others had been filled with colorful expressions of horror. Her assistant handed her the saw. She held it up high enough so that the man on the table could see.

            “No…please…what are you doing?!”

            “Upgrading you, thirty-two,” she said.

            With a flick of her thumb, the saw whirred to life, emitting a high-pitched whine. The blond started to squirm again, trying to escape his restraints. She held it over his right arm. He started to hyperventilate. Slowly, she lowered the blade until it made contact with his flesh. A scream tore out of his throat. She pressed down further, only being slowed up when the blade hit his bone. When the blade started producing sparks from hitting the table beneath, she stopped and raised her tool.

            The man was still screaming. Chudelkin handed her a prosthetic which she hurriedly attached to the stump of his arm. The way these were built, the end would attach to the exposed flesh and connect with the nerves. It would take a few days for the body to adjust and accept the new limb as an extension of itself, but it had worked with all of her agents thus far.

            “Now, now, thirty-two,” she said.

            She stroked his head while he gasped for air and sobbed. He was shaking.

            “Only three more limbs to go,” she insisted. “And then we can work on your head.”

            “No…no…”

            She stepped around him and started to remove the left arm. His screaming intensified. He turned his head and caught sight of his removed arm lying limp on a table. His body convulsed. She continued to cut through his arm with painstaking precision.

            “Chudelkin, I do think he’s going to vomit. Take care of it, please.”

            “Of course, my lady administrator!”

            _Thunk_. The left arm fell off and thudded onto the table. Chudelkin handed her the next prosthetic and snickered as he offered a bucket to the subject. All that was coming from his mouth, however, was bile. She considered it lucky that his stomach must have been empty. Otherwise, he might have started choking.

            “Stop…stop it…please….”

            Focusing on attaching the next prosthetic, she ignored his pleas and shoved the arm into place. On his right side, the fingers at the tips of the fake limb started to twitch. They wouldn’t be fully mobile for a day or so, but she was glad to see that the nerve connections were working. Satisfied with the second arm, she moved down to the left leg and placed the saw just below his knee.

            Unlike the arms, where the less of the old limb there was, the better, the leg units worked better when attached at the base of the knee. Sawing into that area was particularly painful because she had to make sure to separate the tibia from the patella without damaging the latter. After thirty-one procedures, she was considerably better at performing such a separation, but without giving her subjects anesthetics, the pain, naturally, did not decrease with her own accuracy.

            Her hands were steady as she cut into the flesh. Her victim screamed again, but his cries would soon give out. They all ended up fainting when she started the first leg. By the time she moved to make adjustments to the brain, they were blacked out and no longer filling her ears with din as she worked. However, this man didn’t seem to be on the verge of passing out.

            His cries grew more protestant as her blade slipped between the bones, severing them at the tendons. She cleanly lopped it off, traded Chudelkin flesh for machine, and then shoved the prosthetic into place. The man let out a cry of distress and stubbornly remained awake. Narrowing her eyes, she moved onto the next leg. His screaming persisted. When finished with the right leg, she finally undid the restraints.

            “He’s still awake!” Chudelkin protested.

            She shook her head.

            “It doesn’t matter. His body won’t be able to use those limbs right away. He won’t be running anywhere. Carry him over to the chair, Agent Twenty-Seven.”

            “Yes ma’am.”

            Agent Twenty-Seven, who looked to be significantly younger than the man he was transferring from the table to the chair, picked him up with ease and cast a precarious glance at the man who was still wide-awake, but clearly going numb from shock. He sat him down into the chair and stepped back, saluting his boss as she stepped over to her subject with a scalpel and much smaller saw.

            “Now, nothing left to say before I make you mine, thirty-two?” she asked, humming.

            She grasped his face in her palm and pressed her lips close to his ear.

            “Those eyes were so vibrant when you tried to fight for your freedom earlier. So full of life and hope. What was that insolent whelp, Kirigaya, to you, hmm? A friend? A coworker? An ally on his ridiculous mission to kill me?”

            The blond didn’t even blink as she spoke. He stared at some point on the wall—no, not the wall. His eyes rested on the cart where his limbs lay. His mouth sat open, hanging there as if unable to fight the pull of gravity.

            “Nothing at all?”

            He drew in a deep breath. It sounded so pained. His limbs were bleeding where the prosthetics were attached. She’d make sure to clean that up when she grafted skin over top of them later. She waited, curious to see what this broken, captive man had to say to her.

            “I just wanted to love him…”

            Her face twisted up in disgust. Kirigaya Kazuto, a man whom she’d first met when he’d protested the capture of the girl who was now Agent Twenty-Two, was a dangerous individual who’d become obsessed with destroying her experiment aboard the UW-Centoria. He had no connections to any of the subjects taken until now; even with twenty-two, he was a bystander. His protests had been rewarded, of course: she’d slain his wife and child right in front of him and told him to stay out of her way.

            Since then, he’d taken risk after risk to try and publicly uncover the secret project aboard this ship. To the citizens of the galaxy, this ship was simply an android simulation. Hundreds of humanlike machines lived in a mock civilization on board. But the truth of the project was hidden from the public eye. She took real humans and altered their brains to see if she could control them.

            As she cut into the blond’s skull, she silently cursed his final statement to her. If, by some cruel twist of fate, Kirigaya managed to board the UW-Centoria, she’d play his sick game by forcing this man before her to kill him. That might prove the ultimate test for her control over these subjects. If she could make this man, who claimed to love Kirigaya Kazuto, murder him in cold blood, she would know the meaning of true success. If not, she’d dispose of him and find another victim to play with.

            She lifted the piece of skull carefully off of his head and jammed her probes inside of the exposed brain. With her right hand, she picked up the crucial final piece of the process: a computer that interrupted the free will of the subjects. She carefully slipped it into the right place and set about reattaching the piece of skull to his head.

            “No matter, thirty-two,” she said.

            She stroked his cheek with her thumb and gave him a gentle kiss on the crown.

            “You won’t remember this pain, dear puppet.”

            She activated the computer.

            The man formerly known as Eugeo was gone.


End file.
